EOWA Pay Equity Case Study CRF

Adjusting grades to solve EO issues at CRF

Company:	CRF (Colac Otway) Pty Ltd, Victoria
Industry:	Food Processing Facility (Lamb & Veal)
No of Employees:	315

Many companies mistakenly believe that if they pay their workers according to strict grades or levels, they do not need to pay attention to equal opportunity or equal pay issues.

However, rigidities in the grading structure and in the system of progressing up the grades may create pay inequity if they prevent individuals from moving up the pay scale into the grade that would correspond best to the value of work performed.

This scenario can impact particularly on women where they are congregated at the lower levels within an organisation, and was addressed with significant success by CRF (Colac Otway) P/L.

The problem
At CRF, women work mainly as packers in the Further Processing department. This was not an intentional segregation, but the company has found that women tend to prefer the tasks associated with packing as opposed to other, more traditionally male-dominated tasks such as being a knife-hand.

CRF has five levels of pay for its process employees. To become a Level-five employee, one has to be competent in all the jobs in the whole department in order to move up the grades. This posed problems for women at CRF because there were specific jobs at which women typically had no experience because they were traditionally performed by men.

The team at CRF realised that because of this limitation, men were able to move up the Level system faster. This system in turn impacted on women’s overall remuneration within the company because wages are based on job level, and women were consistently grouped in the lower job levels, earning less.

The solution
Once the problem had been identified, CRF worked to address the rigidities in their grading system. The structure was changed and CRF introduced a packing level system so that the mainly female packers were no longer required to undertake all tasks in order to obtain a level-five rating.

The new system recognises that the value of work performed by packers merits grading across the full, five-levels, and should not be restricted to the lower levels because of the non-performance of certain (traditionally-male) tasks such as knife-hand.

Through the creation of this new progression structure especially for packers, female employees are now able to reach level five much more quickly.

The benefits
Changing the level structure has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for CRF. It has led to greater task variety, increased career progression for all employees and increased rotation through tasks, which in turn has reduced manual handling injuries.

Furthermore, it has led to greater retention of valued staff as individuals can now have a career progression path and earn a higher salary within the company

<- Module Back | Next Module ->